Analog love!

So in love with our new family camera, the Diana-mini. It has a split frame option (other mode is square!) and can fit 72 shots one one roll (not including double-exposures).

The film lab I use scanned these in diptychs. I like it. Of course I wouldn't have to print them that way, but the option is there.

I'm in love with the color saturation and quirk of this little plastic gem. It's good for the kids to handle, because it's so light and easy to hold. 

With the exceptions of the first shot (a portait of me by 3-year-old son, Kathir) and this shot of the dog, these images are from the "Upcycled Fashion Show" in which I was one of three featured designers last week at the Echo Lake Aquarium here in Burlington. Also on the runway were Mountain Ash Designs and The Bobbin. Pictured below and above in The Bobbin's lovely blue velvet dress is Lauren Carter, reigning Miss Vermont (and my co-worker).

Flying Hen Studio Caps!

Welcome to The Flying Hen Studio!

Here are some details of the current cap collection and a few words about my methods and motivations for making them. These caps are meant for everyday wear. A cap is your signature, the last thing to put on before leaving the house and a defining feature of your street silhouette. Nevertheless, a cap should be completely practical: weather-wise and comfortable, just the thing to help you out the door into your day. Versatility, function, and easy care are the signatures of Flying Hen Studio style. 

My goals in designing and redesigning these caps over the last 5 years are simple:

1. To create a closer and closer approximation of 'the perfect cap' for the indoor and outdoor everyday wear of folks in my community, that is to say: people whose daily lives include exposure to changes in the weather; multiple work tasks such as retail, restaurant, childcare, agriculture and academia; various modes of transportation (i.e. these should fit smoothly under bike helmets); and usually include social and or artistic events for which one would need something snappy, as well.

2. I make every possible effort to streamline the production process so that I may both pay myself a livable wage for my work and offer them at an affordable price. Outside of my work in the Flying Hen Studio, I work as a nursing assistant, student, and mother of two: every moment counts! Simplicity in design and production helps me maintain the fine balance between compensating myself for my work and keeping the price affordable to my comrades.

3. I work to provide alternatives to sweatshop capitalism in my small atelier by paying myself a livable wage, by participating in my local economy, and by using primarily free, found, thrifted and recycled materials. There is plenty of good cloth available from secondhand and local sources for all of our needs. Truly.

I hope you enjoy these pictures of my work taken by Michael Sundue, aka DJ +5 of the Flying Hen Studio soundlab. To see the work in person or make a purchase, please visit The Bobbin in our beloved Old North End neighborhood of Burlington, Vermont.

O.N.E. love!

Your local cap designer,

Rebecca Mack aka DJ Mothertrucker

LadiDodo: Cardboard Bike Parade

When daily life becomes too rigid, we look to the sky and imagine. Cheap art can save us. Ladidodo!

Summer buzzes as it turns away.

Summer, beaming down, buzzes as it turns away.

Summer's abundance is work. Work leaves its mark on the body.

So much of summer's work is left behind as the daylight closes in. Ideas that never rested on paper, much less on cloth or table, return behind the curtains to wait.

Summer froths and bubbles as it sits down in the shade.

Twilight returns to the evening, aerating the kitchen, resting the eyes on the table. There is a breathable quality to the air in this gentle darkness.

Autumn brings its own adventures: crackling sidewalks, geese that draw up the gaze, gatherings of bicycles and wonderful, windy ideas to share.

More of this, this, and this:

I am wanting more of 

this:

this:
and this:

Anybody in?

pages 31, 32, 33, 34

pages 12, 13, 14, 15:

lomography- redscale film

The Lomography company, reproducers of my favorite piece of Russian plastic (a Soviet-era camera), makes a few of their own film emulsions, including this red-scale film I've been enjoying this summer. 

Nothing beats the summer heat like a little cheap, analog fun in the sun!

Cherry Tree

and it comes from slowing down long enough to...

There's a certain peace obtained by integrating past and present parts of my life.  Pulling out an old, old quilt from my childhood to patch and lay down on my bed, editing piles of old photos to frame one and archive the remaining important ones properly, pulling out a cup given by a loved one long gone and drinking tea in her memory; these actions stitch past into present.  

That peace balances out that ever-flowing excitement for the future; what to make for supper, what to do tomorrow, spaces to create, skills to hone, gardens to plant and harvest, and on and on.  Too often I wash myself away with relentless waves of ideas.  

My good friend, in whose home my studio dwells, laughs every time I realize that my new, amazing idea and plan is one I've already been working on for years, and is half-done when conceived.  This chronic eureka is such a relief, and it comes from slowing down long enough to curate my accumulating creations.

The balance of integrating artifacts of the past with excitement for the future gives me a strong footing in the present moment.

da cinque anni fa...

Through 3-year-old eyes (and a funky plastic lens):

A morning with family in the playground, through three-year-old eyes:

I love my Lomo. (...and my family!)

Rain or shine...

I stumbled upon this scene:

I have learned to watch my feet, that I not smash tiny theatrical spectacles in my giant and ordinary movements.

Mo the cat

Mo, the patchwork cat, made with love by Mothertrucker for her doll-slinging boys.

When two shirts become one...

I do love the Slow Design process of envisioning, sketching, planning, pattern drafting, deconstructing and recycling materials,and finally realizing the design in its unique and given circumstance.  Equally am I drawn to, and frequently fall into, a more fluid squishing of elements on hand; projects whose genesis is the extra cup of coffee, whose realization is fated by a moment's contents of the studio, and worn home just in time to make lunch for small boys.

This garment is of the latter tribe, the Frankengarment. Pieces synthesized for their own good. The most-of-a-western blouse was in a lucky pile I received from Paper Moon Project as she packed for her return to Los Angeles. Into it I gathered a strip of Heather Ross bicycle print fabric and much of a cotton gauze shirt, once upon a time worn for fieldwork by my vegetable-farming husband.